The serial: Largie Castle, A Rifled Nest Day 35

Angus benefited from this rise in rowing standards and by the end of his second year in 1933 was in the winning crew

In sport, especially on the river, Angus came a poor second to Jock, who reached his pinnacle when he rowed for Oxford against Cambridge in 1929. In spite of being an Oxford Blue, Jock’s Magdalen years were lean on rowing triumphs. It may have been due to the beginnings of antagonism towards oarsmen. Nonetheless, money was showered on the boat club in the 20s and 30s and in 1927 they introduced a new barge, which was used as a changing room and for oar storage.

Because Magdalen was a small college, its boat club was introduced quite late (1859) but it made up for lost time and by the late 1800s and early 1900s the majority of the Oxford boat crew were from there.

Top oarsmen were usually ex-public school boys but when Angus arrived in 1931, this exclusivity was being challenged (American Rhodes scholars helped break down the class barrier and two, Roger Black and William Whipple rowed with Angus).

As Magdalen ceased recruiting undergraduates for their rowing expertise, the college lost its preeminent position on the river. However, under George Gordon (Magdalen’s president from 1928 to 1942), the downhill slide halted.

Triumphant

During the 30s, as a result of systematic training, Magdalen went head of the river in the Torpids and Summer Eights (a rowing inter-college contest for oarsmen of first rank) and remained triumphant throughout that decade.

Angus benefited from this rise in rowing standards and by the end of his second year in 1933 was in the winning crew.

The Torpids, a bumps race, where boats are rowed single file, each trying to catch (bump) the one in front, is suited to long, narrow waters and offers a sharper feeling than a timed race.

As the name suggests, the Torpids, for less expert oarsmen, are held in the seventh week (the beginning of March) of Hilary (the spring term) for four days.

Although Angus never made it into the first eight of the Summer Eights (a fashionable event in Oxford University’s calendar), he rowed for the second eight in 1933, when they were bumped by Oriel and New College and the following year by Balliol.

In each race, Angus rowed with a Rhodes scholar from the United States Military Academy of West Point. Roger Black coincidentally died in a car crash in America the same year Angus was lost at sea in South-East Asia.

Jock Fletcher-Campbell, who became a clergyman, was in the bow seat; next was William Whipple (also from West Point) and F M McFisher.

At stroke six was Wykehamist Lionel SackvilleWest who, after the war, settled at the family estate of Knole in Kent and each time his wife gave birth to a daughter (they had five), Sackville-West’s literary cousin, Vita, wrote a poem bemoaning their failure to produce a male heir.

At seven came Thurston (Tut) Irvine, the younger brother of Andrew, himself an oarsman but a member of Oxford’s Merton College.

In 1922 he rowed for Oxford in the boat race against Cambridge and two years later, aged 22, accompanied George Mallory on an expedition to climb Mount Everest where they both lost their lives and finally the stroke, William Hughes. The boat was coxed by John Haldane.

Contribution

Undoubtedly, Angus’s lesser rowing skills still helped him gain a place at Magdalen. Although he never competed with Jock, Magdalen’s captain of boats from 1928 to 1929 who rowed in the Oxford University Fours in 1927, Angus’s contribution was considerable.

He was strong, athletic and large and because of his size (12st 2lbs), took a middle position in the boat (positions three, four and five being the engine-room of a crew with both height and weight an advantage).

Not much has changed in college rowing since Angus’s day: boats are plastic and the oar blades resemble a paddle more than the pre-war slim pencil shape.

The hearty amateur ex-public school ethos has vanished; colleges recruit undergraduates for their academic ability and not for sporting skills so today rowing is seen not as a competitive sport but a pleasant form of exercise.

Only the blue boat crew who compete in the famous boat race is highly competitive; these men are 25-year-old postgraduates of Olympic standard.

In Angus’s day, oars had no white lily embellished on their blades. Today each boat is named.

In Angus’s era they merely had the college coat of arms on the bow.

There was no lycra either; any garb went for practice rowing but for Eights week and the Torpids, crews wore a white singlet with black trimming, baggy towelling shorts and a white sweater with a black line along the V.

I realised how much Angus must have liked Oxford. Signifying sport and leisure rivers, particularly those in south-east England where he went to university, had treated him kindly.

The sea was different. As a means of travel, it served a more serious purpose, its thoroughfares prone to disruption by both man and nature.

With an absent father (who was no oarsman) and a reserved mother, it was rowing that supplied Angus with an acceptable form of intimacy and comradeship.

In the end, this redoubtable pastime may have helped determine his future career in the army. Flying was too solitary and individualistic an activity for a man raised to be part of a team.

Commission

I intended to end my Oxford visit in the place where I had begun: at Falklands House. It not only housed the air squadron but also the university’s Officers’ Training Corps.

I learned here that instead of entering the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, Angus gained at the Oxford University Officers’ Training Corps (OUOTC) his Certificate B, which entitled him to a commission in the special reserve of officers, or in modern terms, the Territorial Army.

To be certain, I wrote to the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst asking if he held records on Angus.

“Your uncle,” came the reply, “would not have attended RMC, Sandhurst as he was commissioned directly into the army via the OTC.

The absence of an entry for him in the RMC Gentleman Cadet Register confirms this.”

More tomorrow.